Rome, Luigi Spina's photographs on display at the Museo Centrale di Montemartini

From April 18 to September 22, Faces of Rome at the Centrale Montemartini opens. Photographs by Luigi Spina, a photographic exhibition born from the encounter between the Capitoline Superintendence and the research project on ancient portraiture at the Centrale Montemartini Museum developed by photographer Luigi Spina between 2018 and early 2019. The exhibition features a selection of 60 black-and-white photographs, format 50 x 60 cm, which photographer Luigi Spina took with an optical bench, a technique already used by the author with high-level results, and then personally printed by hand. The photographic images depict 37 ancient faces in marble or travertine, significant examples of the Capitoline collections at the Museo Centrale Montemartini, some the subject of multiple shots and all chosen by the author for their expressive potential. These are portraits from the Republican and Imperial periods, depicting people whose identities are known to us, but also faces of strangers, as well as some ideal heads, Roman copies from Greek originals.

Placing himself for long silent days in front of the ancient faces, Luigi Spina unveiled them, deeply understood them through the medium that is most congenial to him. Luigi Spina’s fine photographic research has led to the creation of images that, by capturing various and original aspects of the sculpted faces, suggest details and particulars not always easily discernible at first glance. Visitors are thus invited to embark on a new tour to discover the contemporaneity expressed by the physiognomic features of the ancient sculptures, proposed in all their vibrant humanity and expressiveness.

The arrangement involves the widespread distribution of the photos throughout the museum rooms, placed in close proximity to the subjects they portray, so that visitors can best appreciate the suggestions expressed by the photographs. Through Luigi Spina’s personal sensibility and artistic interpretation, he can thus return to observe the exhibited works with a different gaze, becoming himself the protagonist of the visual dialogue between the two different artistic languages.

Acclaimed art photographer Luigi Spina has published several books: Diario Mitico, which collects photos of works from the Farnese Collection in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, stands out in particular, and was awarded the bronze medal for “exemplary design and concept” in the photo book category of theInternational Creative Media Award for Books (ICMA) in 2018. The opening of the exhibition is enriched by the presentation of the catalog of the same name, edited by Claudio Parisi Presicce and Luigi Spina, in which the succession of faces in Luigi Spina’s photographic images follows the photographer’s sensibility, who has captured a series of evocative references among the works and created his own ideal path, a visual journey, not constrained in any way by the chronology and style of the ancient sculptures.

A final summary at the close of the volume provides a brief art-historical background of the ancient works, the subject of the shots.
For all information you can call 060608 (daily from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.) or visit the official website of the Museo Centrale Montemartini.

Pictured: Luigi Spina, Roman Portraits.

Source: press release

Rome, Luigi Spina's photographs on display at the Museo Centrale di Montemartini

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